A Calgary police officer said little things can be done by any community to reduce the dangers of organized crime. Gord Eiriksson, a gang specialist for the Calgary Police Service, warned Prince George that you have to be inventive, look to other communities for best practices already in play, and be open minded to change tactics at the speed the gangs do.
"We wrote our first gang strategy four years ago. We just completely rewrote it," he told The Citizen.
One of the ways the CPS stays plugged into the community is by acting as a communications conduit between the public and all the partner agencies in the city. Their police department operates a gang helpline (403-206-8191) that gets some interesting calls.
"We get various people calling in not necessarily with tips but for requests for inform," he said. "They tell us 'I have a friend involved in a gang, what can I do to help him?', or asking us to come do a presentation, or asking what the signs of gang activity are, and things like that."
When folks call the number they have to leave a message, and someone calls them back in short order. The helpline gets 10 or 15 calls a month but they are strategic calls, said Eiriksson.
Some can be dealt with by himself, some by other police officers, but most need the caller to be referred to some supportive partner group in a specialist field (addictions, mental health, education, etc.).
Calgary has launched a Youth At Risk Development Team and there is a new adult-based exit strategy group (federally funded) so the work can begin to deprogram the city's gang members who are willing to leave that life behind.
There is also a comprehensive website that does a lot of the same outreach and communication gotten by calling the helpline.
Enforcement has turned strategic as well. Eiriksson said Calgary is one of only three cities in North America to use the Real Time Operations Centre model of policing. CPS officials went to study the process with the New York Police Department. Whereas most police detachments have a late-night staff of general duty members and a skeleton staff of supervisory officers and civilian support staff, the RTOC has all that plus a team of savvy crime specialists (detectives, forensic analysts, major crime investigators, etc.) on standby so full tactical investigations can be launched at any point around the clock, saving them losing valuable time waiting for the main cluster of specialists to come in in the morning.
There is also a movement underway, said Eiriksson, to create in Alberta a group similar to the
Ontario Gang Investigators Association, a supergroup of the province's organized crime investigation specialists. "The gangs are always in contact, always in motion, always learning new ways to do crime, so we have to put our minds together and share information too, so we can get in front of the gangs as fast as possible," he said.
When the public gathers on Nov. 1 and 2 for the Community Solutions - Gang Crime Summit at the Ramada Hotel, these are some of the points that can stir the discussion, Eiriksson said, and congratulated Prince George as a whole for holding court on organized crime and its effects. There are solutions, he said, so don't think the gangs can't be kicked out of town, at least in part, if the community puts their minds to it.
